Milan Patnaik, a cybersecurity trailblazer with extensive experience in both India’s defence and private sectors, is leading the charge in safeguarding the country’s critical infrastructure through WhizHack Technologies. As a CISO and one of the driving forces behind WhizHack, Milan is pioneering cybersecurity solutions for OT systems, which form the backbone of India’s most vital and fast-growing industries.
Milan's career began with defending against cyber threats targeting India's defence sector, he quipped, " The Defense sector is one of the most attacked sectors as far as cyber is concerned. It helps you to find solutions to complex problems such as attacks across air-gapped networks etc. In addition, cyber-attack on the internet facing network and endpoints for data extraction, espionage and complex forms of cyber security attacks are on a rise these days that makes you develop out of the box solutions to thwart the next gen attackers."
India’s Cyber Security Challenge
India faces significant cybersecurity challenges, particularly within OT systems. Unlike traditional IT environments, OT encompasses essential infrastructure sectors such as power, railways, telecom and oil & gas. Patnaik identifies the power sector as especially vulnerable, stating, "The highest risk of cyber-attack, say from a state-owned group against our country, is in the Power Sector. It is because power disruptions intrinsically can cause disruptions to various critical sectors like airways, rail etc. Since power, like many industrial control sectors, depends on OT and is controlled by SCADA systems, security to such systems is the need of the hour. Large scale deployments of PLCs/RTUs distributed spatially adds to the problem and very few cyber security companies are looking at this sector."
WhizHack’s Unique Approach
WhizHack has been a forerunner in OT security. The only Indian company to have deployed OT security products below Layer 3 with unique offerings like OT based NIDS, OT Deceptions and OT SIEM. He said, “we are geared up to support the country against fighting cyber-attacks to Critical Information Infrastructures. In addition, unique products in the IT sector such as Deception by TRACE, SaaS based Ransomware and Phishing Simulators, etc are our key contributions”. Under Patnaik’s aegis, WhizHack has rolled out substantial turn-key projects in the domain of OT-cyber security with the Power Sector, both traditional and Renewable, Airports, Chemical sector etc. He added, “Our IT products have been used in multiple sectors including government for threat intelligence”.
Advancing Cybersecurity with AI Integration
Recognizing the growing sophistication of cyber threats, Milan emphasises the importance of AI in cybersecurity. WhizHack integrates advanced AI models across its product range to detect and respond to potential threats in real time. "Today, a cyber security product without an AI based model to detect malicious activity will seldom be effective against basic attacks. In addition, all AI models developed for cyber security need to be trained using data that is local and specific to the region. Hence self-learning systems like un-supervised AI need to be incorporated to be effective against attacks specific to an organisation. WhizHack uses AI in all its products and presents the alerts generated by a triple layer engine viz, signature, ML and DL," he explains.
Patnaik signs off by saying, “In the IT sector, WhizHack is expanding its ZeroHack platform, which integrates all layers of cybersecurity—from network to endpoint—onto a single dashboard. By embedding AI at the endpoint level, ZeroHack minimises the workload for security analysts, optimising threat detection and response”.
